Courgette Brownies

Not everyone is going to love you for the abundance of courgettes you’re bringing home, they’re green (or yellow) and they come from the ground, this already puts off 25% of the people I know.

But I dare you to find someone who not only loves this brownies, but can’t even tell they’ve been spiked. – Obviously I mean with courgette, I do not condone the other kind of spiking of brownies without the recipient’s knowledge and/or consent. They’ll have no idea, they’ll just be desperate to know how you made them so damn moist. They’ll be begging for the secret ingredient and when you finally let them in on it, they’ll have eaten the whole batch already.

Just trust me on these, chocolate is the perfect disguise for a lot of things, and courgette is 100% on that list, top of it as far as I’m concerned.

Note for the courgette: you’re going to need to drain the grated courgette of all its moisture or you’ll end up with soggy brownies instead of perfectly moist ones. To do this, grate the courgette straight into a clean teatowel, then fold it so that you can hold it easily and wring it out over the sink. You’ll be surprised how much juice comes outta there.

Grease and line the tin you always use for brownies (most of you have one, right? No matter what measurements I give you, you’re gonna use that one. But just in case, the one I used was 20x20cm)

Grab the biggest saucepan you own and melt the butter, sugar and cocoa together on the lowest heat you can get away with. It’s best to get the butter melting for a bit first before adding the sugar and cocoa to avoid sticking.

Leave it to cool. I know this is hard, I’ve used this brownie method a billion times and it doesn’t get any easier, but if you don’t let it cool down a bit you’re gonna get scrambled eggs on the next step.

Beat in the eggs little by little, follow with the flour and courgette then mix until everything’s combined.

Pour into the baking dish and put on the top shelf of the oven to bake for 35 minutes.

Once done, leave to cool for a little while then transfer to a wire rack (I usually do this by lifting them out still on the baking paper) and slice into 12 brownies.

These’ll keep for a good week in an airtight container, and if they last that long you’ve either gotten the recipe wrong or have freakishly good self control.

Your track recommendation for this recipe is the catchy one off of Chocolat, you’ll feel very Juliette Binoche when you take these out of the oven.